Carrying Torches
by Lance Corporal Avocado
Summary: The shadow temple: dangerous, cold, desolate, beautiful, and horrible. Link and Navi must enter and reclaim it for the sage, but they are prepared: torches, of many kinds, will light their way. Link X Fairy!Navi mush. Boss battle. Violence. One-off.


Lance Corporal Avocado does not own Zelda.

**Carrying Torches**

* * *

Food and water. Oil burning lamps; scrap rags for torches; fish oil to fuel the torches and lamps. Beeswax candles; bundles of dry wood; bombs, labeled with the volumes of their careful measured powder; sulfur impregnated wooden matches; steel for striking sparks-his own blade was hard enough to splinter the steel, he had no need of a dedicated striker. An entire backpack full of gear: standard equipment for a spelunker who expected to fight for his life.

The ancient Hylians had carved away the hill he stood on, creating a low plateau. Their tools had exposed the bare rock. The shear man-made cliffs were hardly twenty feet tall at their highest point, but the climb to the cliffs had been hard enough. The plateau lay almost 3000 feet above Kakariko village, nestled in the base of Death Mountain. The plateau was grassy, at this height the trees were thinning, but they grew nearly to the top of the mountain, wherever they could sink their roots. Death Mountain was not snow topped, Hyrule was too temperate and the mountain not tall enough.

In the middle of the plateau was a low platform, approximately the size of a wagon. Set into that platform was a mosaic, depicting the three stylized triangles that heraldically represented the Triforce. This was a royal marker, and the place it marked was sacred. To those who could read it the iconography below the triangles identified this place as the Shadow Temple. Here the spirits of the dead were revered. Here the Sage of Shadow should keep watch. The temple's entrance lay beyond the far edge of that platform: a steep stair sloping down into darkness.

He looked behind him over the cliff. Kakariko itself was out of sight, its red and blue tiled roofs had disappeared into the valley soon after he began his climb, but he could still see Kakariko's graveyard. Neat rows lined the hills far below him. In the seven years he slept in the Temple of Time hundreds of new graves had been planted-as if those gravestones would bear fruit to end Hyrule's famine.

The man who had climbed all this way was named Link. He wore a pair brown leather boots, with a pair of tan leather britches tucked into them. Over his hands and lower arms he wore a type of enchanted gauntlet that doubled as a bracer, made of leather below the wrist and silver above. The leather was not padded-the better to control his sword with. A white cloth undershirt covered his muscular arms and chest. Over all that a long green tunic fell to his knees, bound with a leather belt. The belt bore a crop of its own: knives and leather ammo pouches, and a simple iron buckle, bearing the same heraldic depiction of the Triforce quartered with a broad leaf. The bottom four inches of a scabbard, slung across his back, hung below this belt. Next to the scabbard his disarrayed blond hair spilled from his cap. His eyes were blue and set in angular face.

Link emptied the scabbard. Three feet of radiant steel with an eight inch hilt, the Sword of Evil's bane.

In the Master Sword's freshly oiled surface he watched his guardian fairy Navi hovering over his left shoulder. Instead of flesh and blood, Navi was a cornflower blue ball of dense gas. He could see through her at her outer edges, but her core was opaque. He knew she was solid in the center. He looked at her four wings, made of a thin veined material, just as transparent as her edges, but articulated by a few thin tendons. Navi did not have any distinguishable features. She did, however, have a proper orientation: a side she kept facing forward and a side she kept facing up. Her wings emerged from her back, the two longest towards the top and the two shorter ones below. She glowed with a soft inner light, that spilled out of her and splashed on his shoulder like water. When she wanted, that spring of light could be a torrent.

"Hey!" Navi said. "Are you in love with that sword? Are you going to stare at it all day or are we going to do this?"

"Yes," Link responded, "I'm ready. But ... Navi I'm ... scared too. This temple has me worried like none of the others have."

Navi bobbed up and down. Link knew the way she moved; that bobbing was her imitation of a nod. "Listen! I felt it as soon as I came over the lip of the cliff. I can feel the evil spirits here Link! I can feel them deep down in that tunnel ... but I know you can do it! You're Hyrule's hero, the antithesis of darkness, why should you fear?"

Link felt giddy as he stepped down into the shadows.

* * *

The boat rocked gently. Pale mists wrapped around its sides and swept over its deck. Droplets condensed on Link's sword, exposed to the cold dark air. The rigging of the ship, broken and devoid of sails, creaked. The floorboards creaked when Link shifted his weight. The wind pushed against a shut door, it was loose on its hinges and it creaked too.

Link shivered.

"Keep an eye out Navi, maybe fly a bit higher, I need to get out a fur."

The temple was near colorless gray when it was not pitch-black, and the mist gleefully took up Navi's blue light. It wove this new color into itself, and so as Navi flew higher she was followed by a pale blue aura. Without putting aside his sword, Link set down his lamp and swung his pack around in front of him to take out a wolfos fur cloak.

"Okay I've got it."

Link wrapped the fur around himself. Navi returned to his shoulder. Link picked up his lamp. They had little time for comfort this deep underground, with the possibility of danger at any moment, but now there seemed to be nothing except the ominous sounds of the ship and the cold mist. Link lifted his cloak and clucked softly with his tongue to get Navi's attention. She flew under the cloak, warm against his side. Link closed the cloak over her. With the heavy cloak on one side and Link on the other she could hardly move.

"Link!" she said, her voice somewhat muffled, "I can't keep an eye out in here."

"Don't worry about it," Link responded, "I think we're safe for the moment."

Navi shifted under the cloak, peeking out through the front.

She spoke. "Maybe this temple would be a decent tourist attraction, it's sort of pretty ... If it wasn't so dangerous getting here."

They watched the mist thread its way along the posts holding the railing of the ship's deck, coiling around the wood. Link shifted, and the droplets along the length of the Master Sword glinted. Far below the railing of the ship he could see a silent and gray river. He stepped back quickly and shivered again.

"Link, I don't like being this close to the edge."

Link sheathed his sword, removed a glove, and reached inside the cloak to scratch Navi's head. She rumbled quietly, a soft fairy purr. Link moved to the deck house and sat down, leaning against the wall gently, afraid the aged and rotten wood might give way.

"How deep do you think we are?" Link asked.

"I don't know. More than one hundred feet, but certainly less than a quarter mile. Probably a few hundred. They say that the deeper you go, the farther you get from the gods. But we carry the Triforce wherever we go, so they ought to follow us right?"

"Navi I have no idea ..."

Navi turned, and he scratched farther back. Link brushed his fingers along her top right wing, tracing the ridge of a tendon.

She tilted her wing, pressing it against his finger. Link followed the tendon up to the tip. The edge of her wing was slightly thicker and tougher, a flexible frame, over which the membrane of her wings was stretched. He ran his hand along its top edge. Suddenly he felt the wing beat under his hand. Navi slipped out from under his cloak. Beating her wings again she turned and flew up towards his shoulder, coming to rest just barely brushing his cheek.

Link lay his hand gently across the smaller of her right wings. She relaxed, leaning against his face.

The wood creaked, but to Link and Navi it no longer sounded ominous, now, it sounded soothing.

"Hey, listen ... do you think we could stay like this for a while?"

* * *

Link's bow twanged as he sent another arrow towards Bongo-Bongo's giant eye, but it blinked, and the arrow glanced harmlessly off the unnaturally hard flesh. The monster, the mindless beast, that they had fought none stop for almost five full minutes now, swept its disconnected fist across the drum skin island arena, and nearly took off Link's head.

In a low crouch he shuffled to his right, staying a respectful distance from the edge of the island. The drum skin vibrated when struck, and threatened to fling him off into the poison sea. Bongo-Bongo lost track of him again. Its hand came back to swat at the tiny fairy buzzing around its eye, illuminating Link's target.

"Link, let's try a firefly!" Navi shouted, over the thundering of the drum.

Navi darted forwards just in front of the monster's face. Link closed his eyes and looked away as, with a loud bang, she flared blue-white and blinded the beast before going completely dark.

Link opened his lamp for illumination and dashed up the beast, nimbly avoiding its strikes. He chopped and stabbed at its head, but the hide near its eye was as tough as Volvagia's, and he made no wounds. One of the hands drew closer to him, he slashed at the palm and drew blood!

"We're switching targets Navi, go for the hands!"

The beast tried to draw back, but Link was too quick. He became a butcher who, come sundown, remembers his wife's anniversary, but still has four customers in his shop. Working furiously with his cleaver, he chops meat off the carcass as fast as he can. Soon the white of bone and fat shows through Bongo-Bongo's hands in many places, but the beast begins to recover, and Link withdraws before its watering eye can open and spot him: he must not let the beast hit him, a single punch or slap from those hands, easily twelve feet long, would be the end of him.

Navi was recovering her strength too, and as she brightened Link closed his lamp to hide his location, sheathing his sword and unslinging his bow from behind his back.

Navi moved quickly, keeping pace with Bongo-Bongo's left hand as Link shot it repeatedly with the Gerudo's ice arrows. The beast was in pain, and its hands no longer formed properly into fists, but he couldn't seem to do enough damage.

"Link, the tips of its eyelids aren't protected, pin them back!"

Bongo-Bongo's single eye was four feet in diameter, and protected by six tapering two-foot long flaps of tough skin, arrayed around it like flower petals. But Navi was right, only the thickest parts of the flaps were hardened-the tips appeared to be soft bare skin!

Taking a position above, ahead, and to the right of Bongo-Bongo's eye, Navi lit up the island in stark blue and black. One-handed, he slipped the lamp over the hook on the right side of his pack, and used it to light several torches. He scattered them around the island. This shooting would require accuracy and precision, and he needed good lighting to pull it off.

Bongo-Bongo's hand came in from the side, but with the increased light he had plenty of warning. Unfortunately it knocked one of the torches into the liquid: he would need to work quickly.

Link was a master archer, and his first arrow drove straight through one of the beast's eye-lids-and straight out the other side too! Damn! He'd just given a phantom shadow beast a body piercing!

"Hey! I thought you were trying to kill this asshole Link! It WOULD look pretty good with your medallions hanging from its eye-lids, but that's REALLY not the point!"

He took aim more carefully at a different eye-lid. This time half the shaft disappeared through the eye-lid, but then buried itself in the beast's neck. The eye-lid twitched reflexively but could not pull the arrow loose. Quickly, he shot another arrow, transfixing a second eye-lid to the beast's neck, just below the first.

He had to move now, dashing towards the monsters to avoid a wide-swing that fizzled another of his precious torches in the liquid.

He pinned back the third and fourth eye-lids before Bongo-Bongo wised up and destroyed the last of the torches. He tried to set down another torch, but the fingertips of one deadly hand just barely hit it as he drew it out. The wood splintered as it was ripped from his hand, and Bongo-Bongo took care to push the ruined torch into the water: that was it for good illumination. He had four eye-lids pinned and it would have to be good enough. He slung his bow on his back, reaching for his sword and lamp.

"Navi, another firefly!" Link commanded.

Bongo-Bongo was not, after-all, entirely mindless. It remembered that word "firefly", and drew back, but Navi was already moving.

With a practiced eye Link gauged the distance between himself and Bongo-Bongo to be a little less than twenty feet. He flipped his lamp closed, and waited. The beast took Navi's flash full-on. Link saw it through his closed eyes and charged in complete darkness.

"One, two," he counted his strides aloud. He brought his sword up in his left hand, pointing straight forward, but with his elbow just ahead of his stomach. By "three", his instincts were telling him to stop running, it was too dark, he was going to hit something! But that was-of course-the point. Still, the thought of plunging unknowingly into that deadly sea ...

"Four, five," he heard a buzzing, Navi had returned to his side. He knew he was still on target. He shouted suddenly, as loudly as he could, to reveal his location. In the darkness before him Bongo-Bongo turned directly towards him and tried desperately to see its foe.

On the sixth stride he twisted at the waist. Out of his view he opened his lamp wide. Sudden light flooded the room. The horrible tearing eye appeared before him. The two eye-lids left unpinned were shut hard. The pupil was tightly contracted. Fortunately, Link was a master swordsman as well and he thrust his sword directly into it. He drove through the cornea, burying his sword up to the hilt.

The beast shrieked hideously and wrenched itself off the blade, blinding itself in the process, and leaving gobs of putrefied humours behind-damnit, he was gonna have to clean that off later!

Link lept back out of the reach of the writhing monster.

"Link!" Navi yelled over the beast's screams, "Lights on!" Link snapped his lamp closed as Navi, her strength returning, repainted the island in her cornflower blue.

In front of him, the beast twisted in the air. Fluid drained away from the soon empty crater that used to be its eye socket. Flailing about, it banged against the drum, keeping to no beat or rhythm. It splashed in the liquid and spun around. Too far gone to think; now trying to run, but not knowing which way to escape; now trying to smash Link, but not knowing which way to strike. Link kept his distance warily, believing the beast to be even more dangerous in its death throes.

Overtime its movements slowed and its cries died out. It lay down, half clinging to the drum, half submerged. Then it lost control of its substance and dissolved into a pool of shadow that rapidly boiled away. Dim yellow-tinged light sprung up and provided some illumination.

"Plop!" In the sudden and complete silence a new sound became audible: the last music Bongo-Bongo would ever play. "Plop! Plop!" As the last of Bongo-Bongo's rotten eye dripped off the Master Sword.

* * *

The air was acrid. Corrosive fluid lapped all around, blown by winds that had no earthly source. With the evil spirit of Kakariko destroyed, Link and Navi stood alone at the core of the Shadow Temple. An endless violet sea stretched far away in all directions, eerily illuminated from above by a yellow sky. In the distance the scenery simply faded away. No rays of light could pass through so many miles of air to show them the horizon.

The Temple was purified, if not safe. The sage could now return to the Temple to resume her work. She would need guards, for the Temple was still populated by lesser spirits and unspeakable abominations of mud, shadow, and rotting flesh, but Link and Navi's work was done. Diligence and force of numbers were needed here now, to clear out the Temple and keep it safe, not lone heroes to run pinpoint missions.

They could leave now, and return to the surface, but they lingered. Neither had spoken for several minutes. They circled the outer rim of the giant drum skin, staring into the distance. The old wooden ship had returned and was anchored off to one side.

"Navi, where are we?" Link asked.

"We should be underground, but the boat took us someplace strange."

"What, like the Sacred Realm?"

Navi was silent for a few moments before turning to him. "No, I don't think so. This place is something else. Do you know how long we were on the boat? I ... fell asleep."

Link twisted his head to look up at her. "Heh, well actually so I did. No more than an hour or two I think."

Navi flew lower to hover over his shoulder. They turned again to look back out over the water.

"What do we call it," Navi asked, "Styx? Nile? Sanzu? Many cultures associate bodies of water with death, so there's plenty of names to choose from."

Link smiled. "How about Lake Vinegar? It smells bitter enough. You think we could put this stuff on salads? I've got some empty bottles that should hold it-"

"Link, no! I'm pretty sure you can't drink it! It's-It's ..." she trailed off laughing. "It's purple for goddess' sake!"

"Maybe we can sell it to someone. Booze-ango! Goes well with any gamey old meat."

When she ignored him and went on laughing he smiled. His pitiful attempt at a jest had lightened the mood. A minute went by, as they quieted down, with Navi drifting closer to Link, and Link leaning gradually towards her.

Soon, Navi was so close he could feel the wind from her beating wings. He heard nothing but those beating wings. Slowly, tentatively, she drifted towards him. Her glow filled his vision, and as she drew closer his surroundings faded out. She stopped, her aura just tickling the end of his nose. He put his hands around her, meshing his fingers with her wings from below, gripping her firmly. Her wings stilled and she settled into his grip. He stared at her, losing himself in her core. She lost herself in his eyes.

With his strong hands wrapped around her back he pulled her towards him. She felt his grip near her wings shift as he angled to get his nose out of the way. She felt a shiver pass through her wings. She flapped them, pressing forwards. He pulled her then, taking up the slack. Now, she was so close that the stubble near his lips scratched her. She flapped her wings once more, closing the final gap and molding her denser core around his lips.

Link broke the kiss, sliding his cheek along her. He ran his fingers down her, and she leaned against them. She balanced precariously on his hand, only his finger tips prevented her from falling off. Link leaned over her, his nose pressed against her. His hair fell all around her.

Suddenly Link tucked her under one arm and lay down on the drum skin. She squirmed free and alighted on his chest. He, smiling, raised his head to kiss her but she was just out of reach. He strained his neck, unable to reach her without pulling her closer by hand. She buzzed and flew forwards, leaning against his face, not quite touching his lips. Her wing-beats sent vibrations down his nose. She stilled her wings and rolled down his cheek, landing with a barely perceptible thump on the drum skin beside him.

In the deepest sanctum of the Shadow Temple, all their troubles and toil momentarily forgotten, they feel asleep.

* * *

**AUTHOR'S NOTE:**

**Lance Corporal Avocado here. I was browsing the Legend of Zelda fiction you fine folks have been working on, and discovering that it was pretty good :). But I noticed there wasn't NEARLY enough Navi shipping :(. I'm not a writer, but I said: "I can fix this! I know how to integrate vector fields on curves!"**

**As it turns out, I know how to use the English language as well. That was a much more useful skill.**

**On a more serious note, I want to explain why Navi is a ball with wings. A lot of Navi shipping ends the same way: with Navi giving up her fairy form in favor of a human body "so she can be with Link." Why? Why does SHE always have to give up her form? Why do EITHER of them have to give up the forms they have known and used their entire lives? **

**People are brilliant and creative, and the power of our hearts is the strongest force in the world. They would find a way to be together, emotionally AND physically. And they probably wouldn't have too much trouble doing it. Love, like Nature, always finds a way.**

**Personally? I think it's just because us ficcers are too lazy to figure out how to write good mush when one of the participants isn't human. So I accepted the challenge: take Navi EXACTLY as the game gives her to us, and make it work.**

**This was a one-off. I don't have any plans to write anything else.  
**


End file.
